“Oui, I speak a little French.”
J.T. pulled her out of the crowd and out of the store. He didn’t say a word until they were in the car.
“You just can’t obey, can you? I’m doing my best to teach you how to be American and what do you do but run off and display yourself like a common tramp.”
“Not like Heather,” she said under her breath, not meaning for him to hear.
But he did hear. “Leave my friends out of this. In fact, leave me out of this. I am an American. You are an American wife. You are not some French floozy who sits in drugstores and lets men ogle her. You conduct yourself in a proper manner. You’d think that being a princess you’d have some idea of decent conduct, but it’s obvious you don’t. The American wife is a lady. She is respectful to her husband, she obeys him—which you wouldn’t even do in our phony marriage ceremony. And she—”
“You remember that but you do not remember my name?”
He ignored her. “The American wife helps her husband in every way that she can. She listens to him; she learns from him; she—”
He lectured her every minute during their sightseeing excursion until Aria began to feel that her brief adventure in the drugstore had branded her as a cross between Nell Gwyn and Moll Flanders. She tried her best to pay attention to the American pictures in the National Gallery but she saw other couples holding hands, the men sneaking kisses, the women giggling. “I don’t guess they’re married, are they?” she asked J.T. “Or else they wouldn’t be acting like that. The women would be doing something dutiful.”
He didn’t answer but read aloud another paragraph from the guidebook.
Waiting in their hotel room was a three-foot stack of history books.
“I had them sent,” J.T. said, “and they’re all textbooks with questions at the end. You’re to read a chapter then I’ll quiz you on it. Get started while I take a shower.”
“Get started while I take a shower,” Aria mocked, and held up a book to throw at the closed bathroom door but then she saw a newspaper on the bureau and above one column the words LANCONIA’S PRINCESS TO VISIT NEW YORK MONDAY.
“Lanconia,” she said to herself. “Lanconia. I must learn to be an American so their government will help me get my kingdom back.” She opened the first textbook and began to read.
J.T. came out of the bathroom, wearing only his trousers, just as the telephone rang. He listened to the person on the other end. “No, baby, I’m not mad at you,” he said in a tone she had never heard him use before.
Aria looked up from her history book. His bare back was to her and she found the sight not unpleasant. Muscles moved about as he talked. There were scars on one side of him, more healed than they were on the island, but she did not find them unattractive.
“Yeah, I might be able to get away. After the work I’ve done today, I need a break.” Abruptly, he turned to look at Aria, who looked back at her book. “No, no problem at all. I’ll see you here in half an hour.”
Aria didn’t say a word when he hung up the telephone nor did she say anything when he emerged from the bedroom in a dark blue uniform, clean shaven, and she could smell the fresh scent of lotion across the room.
“Look, I’m going out for a while. You have enough to do that you don’t need me. Call room service and order yourself dinner. I might be late.” He didn’t say another word but left the room.
Aria’s mother had explained about men’s infidelities and said that they were something a wife had to bear, but she had not described how they made a woman feel. Aria went to the window and looked down at the street. J.T. was leaving the hotel, his arm around the plump Heather, and as Aria watched, he kissed her.
Aria turned around, her fists clenched to her side. “Kneq la ea execat!” she muttered, then put her hand to her mouth at her use of such language.
She called room service and ordered caviar, pâté de foie gras, champagne, and oysters. She glanced at the stack of history books. “And send me a selection of your American magazines.”
“You want movie mags, confessions, or what?” the bored woman on the other end asked.
“Yes, anything. And I’d like a Coke, no, two Cokes and…and a whiskey.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “How’d you like a couple of rum and Cokes?”
“Yes, that will do fine.” She dropped the telephone.
The meal arrived with a stack of the oddest magazines Aria had ever seen, all about people she had never heard of with the most intimate stories told about them. She read while she ate, while she bathed, and after she climbed into bed wearing a sedate white nightgown. She thought that Lieutenant Montgomery could sleep on the couch. The thought of him made her bury her nose deeper in the magazines. MY HUSBAND BETRAYED ME WITH ANOTHER WOMAN. She read that story avidly.
Chapter Eight
THE next morning an awful sound woke Aria and she opened her eyes to see Lieutenant Montgomery lying beside her, on top of the covers, snoring loudly. She hadn’t been aware of when he had returned to the room.
The telephone rang, and as it was on his side of the bed, she wasn’t going to lean across him to answer it. He picked it up on the sixth ring.
“Yeah, this is Montgomery.” He listened for a moment then turned and looked at Aria. “Yeah, she’s right here with me. Yeah, in the same bed, not that it’s any of your business.” He moved the phone away from his mouth. “How soon can you be ready to fly to Key West?”